“The developers are to have great understanding of Chinese market” – Bashir Modanov, NewBornTown

“The developers are to have great understanding of Chinese market otherwise they’ll never succeed there”

NewBornTown is a chinese globalized mobile EcoSystem with own products and ad network. In 2014 it was one of the top ten fastest growing mobile internet companies in China. Its well-known products Solo System apps were awarded as global best apps in 2015, while the development teams were also entitled as Google Play Top Developers. Today we represent you an interview with Bashir Modanov, marketing specialist at NewBornTown.

In 2015 SOLO users exceeded 200 million, in a number of countries the app was ranked first in the Personalization category on Google Play and further awarded the honor of Top Developer and the Best App of 2015 on Google Play. What is the next desired step of NewBornTown success?

The next step for NewBornTown is to further optimize Solo System apps and services, especially to enrich content provided via Solo apps so that active users spend longer time with us. In the long run, NewBornTown’s ambition is to cover 1 billion users worldwide and deliver to each and every one of them a delightful value-added user experience.

For your products, what is the principle difference between user acquisition campaigns in different countries?

In China market, NewBornTown did not run any campaigns due to the region has not been the company’s focus yet. In other markets, NewBornTown influences KOLs on developer forums at the early stage of Solo Launcher to gain organic user growth, and now the company run campaigns based on ROI analysis.

Now many Chinese companies are interested in overseas market and since NewBornTown has accumulated a lot of experience in that aspect, the company works as a bridge in connecting China with the rest of the world.

The smartphone purchases growth rate (KPCB report, 2015) together with number of downloads per user are slowing down, and this can lead to a CPI growth. Do you think it means that only companies with large budgets for promotion will survive?

We could not say only companies with large promotion budgets will survive, but indeed there is a trend for users to spend most of their time on fewer “Super Apps”. However, it’s always the quality and uniqueness of product/apps matters the most. Examples are SnapChat and AirBNB, which when you look at how they hack their growth, the factors are not only paid promotions. One reason we see the numbers of installs slowing down is because last few years there always was “Bomb Apps” like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Periscope, etc. and recently we could see fewer viral apps.

Specialists pay great attention to emerging markets. Speaking of them, what is the main indicator for mobile industry for considering a market as the emerging one: smartphone usage growth, national per capita income, GDP, time users spend in apps? How do you treat emerging markets?

All of this indicators are very important to treat as emerging markets, and also eCPM and mobile search traffic must be in this list as well. NewBornTown values our growth in the emerging markets and has accumulated a large user base there, and will keep following up on the trends in these markets.

Why European mobile market is interesting for China? Is it just a question of paying users, or prestige and need of global presence?

First of all, it’s a question of quality users. We really love overseas users, they interact with developers for a good user experience and provide great feedback what help us improve our apps. Secondly it’s a question of paying users and needs global presence. From our side we can’t say that we are only interested in European mobile market, we are more interested in whole global markets and trying to connect the world.

What are the key steps publishers need to take to penetrate Chinese market?

The developers are to have great understanding of Chinese market otherwise they’ll never succeed there.

An example is that unlike Play Store as the dominating Android market worldwide, there are many different channels to work with in China. Another point is it’s all about public image, you have to start advertising campaign before even when you publish the product. For example, we can see the Uber’s “propaganda” was everywhere and it’s brings them a huge success in Chinese market.

There are 2 flows in mobile market: China’s expansion to US & Europe mobile market, and attempts to enter China by the American and European companies. Who do you think faces more difficulties?

We think that China’s expansion to US & Europe is easier than to enter China by Western companies. However, it has never been easy at the early stages for any company.

NewBornTown has experiences at different markets, and we are glad to help Chinese companies to go west and western companies to go the other way around.

NewBornTown and Clickky are strategic partners, working together to deliver the best services possible for their clients. For more information about their products please visit their website.

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